The Women of the U.S. Postage Stamp—Part 3

By Jennifer Uhlarik

 

Hello, Readers! Happy April. Wait, what? How are we nearly through FOUR months of this year already? Can you believe it?

 

I’m back again with Part 3 of my series on the ladies who have been featured on American postage stamps. So far, we’ve seen many interesting figures, from former First Ladies to foreign monarchs, social reformers, and more. So let’s dig in and see who else we might meet from past postage stamps.

 

This month, we’ll start with Mary Cassatt, who was featured on US postage three separate times—in 1966, 1988, and 2003. Born in 1844, Cassatt was one of seven children born to her stockbroker father and a well-educated mother. As part of her early education, she traveled abroad, learned several foreign languages, and was exposed to drawing and music. By age fifteen, she’d made the decision that art would become her career, and she began studying at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts against her parents’ wishes. During the years of the Civil War, she went to Europe and studied there. After years of struggle, she did finally find success with her paintings, in part due to a platonic friendship with renowned impressionist painter Edgar Degas. 

This Mary Cassatt Postage Stamp debuted in 1966

The 1988 Mary Cassatt stamp

Here is the 2003 Mary Cassatt stamp,
featuring some of her artwork.

 

Our next lady is Lucy Stone. Born in Massachusetts in 1818, she went on to become the first woman in the state to earn a college degree, which she attained in 1847. After seeing how she and other female teachers were paid a much lower rate than male teachers, she began fighting for equal pay for herself and other women. She both spoke publicly and published her thoughts on matters of slavery, women’s suffrage, and more, and ultimately influenced the likes of Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton—two other well-known abolitionists and suffragists. The three together were known as the “Triumvirate” of Women’s Rights Reformers in the late 1800s. Lucy’s stamp debuted in 1968. 

Lucy Stone's stamp, circa 1968

Next on our list of famous ladies from the postage stamps is Anna Mary Robertson Moses. In 1860, Anna was born, the third of ten children of her farming parents. She attended school only briefly, where she was exposed to art. She’d fallen in love with painting, and her father would sometimes purchase her paper by the sheet so that she could create, using grape or orange juice, grass, and other natural substances as her paints. But by age twelve, Anna went to work for a neighboring farm family and continued to do so until she met and married her husband when she was twenty-seven. The pair had ten children together, five of whom survived past infancy. As a wife and mother, she decorated her home with embroidered or quilted items, as well as made such items as gifts for family and friends. After her husband’s death and her own retirement from farming, she continued with such folk-art activities until arthritis made quilting and embroidery too painful. Upon her sister’s suggestion, seventy-six-year-old Anna took up painting again. For nearly three full decades, she painted and sold her art, creating more than 1500 pieces in that time. When her art debuted to the public, the media dubbed Anna “Grandma Moses” despite the fact she wished to be known as Mrs. Moses. The name stuck. Her inspiring life should show everyone that it’s never too late to reinvent yourself. Her name and artwork was featured on a 6-cent postage stamp in 1969. 

Grandma Moses's stamp
debuted in 1969

 

The next two ladies are both writers. The first is Emily Dickinson, the prolific poet who wrote nearly 1800 poems in her brief fifty-five years. Dickinson never married and lived a large portion of her later life as a recluse. It was only after her death that her remaining siblings discovered her extensive writings. During her life, ten of her poems were published, but posthumously, her poetry has grown to be world-renowned and greatly respected. Dickinson was featured on her postage stamp in 1971. The second writer in this pair of wordsmiths is Willa Cather, who spent some of her early childhood in Nebraska, where she was exposed to the westward migration of many immigrant families. This inspired her many novels of the American west and the lives of immigrants in the American frontier. Her stamp debuted in 1973.

Poet Emily Dickinson's stamp

Novelist Willa Cather's stamp

 

The same year, the next lady graced a postage stamp. I have already written a blog post about Elizabeth Blackwell—also known as America’s first female doctor. Check her out here. 

First female doctor, Elizabeth Blackwell's
stamp.

 

Now let’s drop back in history to the American Revolution, as that’s where the next lady of the postage stamp is from. Sybil Ludington was born in 1761, the daughter of Colonel Henry Ludington. Sybil was honored on a stamp because of a Paul Revere-type ride she supposedly made on April 26, 1777. (I say supposedly, because there are questions whether the ride actually happened, and according to my resources, her descendants have been unable to provide documentation proof of her ride). But as the story goes, sixteen-year-old Sybil rode on horseback some forty miles from her hometown of Fredricksburg, New York (close to Danbury, CT), to alert her father and his 400 militia men that the British had attacked Danbury’s supply depot. Whether the ride actually happened, the United States Postal Service honored Sybil with her own stamp in 1975.

Sixteen-year-old Sybil Ludington rode 40
miles at night to warn her father and the militia
of a British attack.

 

The story behind our next woman is probably the saddest of the list thus far. Clara Maass was born in 1876 to a poor family and eventually went to nursing school to support herself and her family. After graduating school, she worked in her field, getting promoted to head nurse at Newark German Hospital in 1898. When the Spanish-American War broke out, she volunteered her services but was sent home after contracting dengue fever. She returned later and helped to nurse many soldiers—but not because of injury as much as the many illnesses they contracted, among them Yellow Fever. In 1900, the U.S. Army developed a Yellow Fever Commission to study how the illness was transmitted—whether through mosquito bites or through human contact. The Army asked humans to volunteer for the study, in which they would allow themselves to be bitten by infected mosquitoes in exchange for $100/bite (with inflation, this amount would be in the thousands today). While we don’t know her reasoning for this, Maass agreed and purposely allowed herself to be bitten by infected mosquitoes multiple times in the early part of 1901. The first time, she became mildly ill and recovered. Other times, she didn’t fall sick, leading those conducting the study to hope her first experience had immunized her. However, in mid-August of 1901, she endured her next infected bite and grew extremely ill quickly. She never recovered. Ten days after the fateful bug bite, she died at age 25. After this, human experimentation was discontinued, and on what would’ve been her 100^th birthday, Clara was featured on her own postage stamp.

This stamp was issued on what would
have been Clara Maass's 100th
birthday

 

The last lady of the postage stamp that we’ll look at for today is none other than Harriet Tubman, who was featured twice—once in 1978 and again in 1995. Born into slavery, she was originally named Araminta Ross in 1822. In 1849, she escaped her slave owner via the Underground Railroad and made it safely from Maryland to Philadelphia. However, she was not content, knowing that her family and friends were still enslaved. She quickly returned to Maryland and spirited family members safely away to the North. All told, she returned thirteen times and saved seventy people from enslavement, as well as served the Union Army as a scout and spy during the Civil War and later fought for women’s suffrage. Quite an inspiring woman!

The 1978 stamp commemorates
Harriet Tubman's work to free
slaves via the Underground
Railroad.

This 1995 stamp honors Tubman's 
Civil War service.

 

That’s it for now, but we’ll continue our look at these honorees next month. Until then…

 

It’s Your Turn: Which of the women who were honored with their own stamp do you find the most memorable, and why?

 

Jennifer Uhlarik discovered western novels at twelve when she swiped the only “horse” book from her brother’s bookshelf. Across the next decade, she devoured westerns and fell in love with the genre. While attaining a B.A. in writing from the University of Tampa, she began penning her own story of the Old West. She has finaled in and won numerous writing competitions and appeared on various best-seller lists. Besides writing, she’s been a business owner, a schoolteacher, a marketing director, a historical researcher, a publisher, and a full-time homemaker. She lives near Tampa, Florida, with her husband and fur children.

 

Available Now:

Love and Order: A Three-Part Old West

Romantic Mystery

 

Wanted: 

Family, Love, and Justice

One Old West Mystery Solved Throughout Three Short Romantic Stories

Separated as children when they were adopted out to different families from an orphan train, the Braddock siblings have each grown up and taken on various jobs within law enforcement and criminal justice.

 

Youngest child, Callie, has pushed past her insecurities to pursue a career as a Pinkerton agent. Middle child, Andi, has spent years studying law under her adoptive father’s tutelage. And the eldest and only son, Rion, is a rough-and-tumble bounty hunter. 

 

When the hunt for a serial killer with a long history of murders reunites the brother and sisters in Cambria Springs, Colorado, they find themselves not only in a fight for justice, but also a fight to keep their newly reunited family intact. How will they navigate these challenges when further complicated by unexpected romances?

 

 

Reach for the stars to change the world…

I recently watched the motion picture, Harriet. The movie was excellent. The writing, actors, and settings are some of the best I’ve seen as far as historical movies go. While I watched this emotional story unfold, I questioned what was real and what was contrived by Hollywood for my viewing pleasure. So, let’s take a look at this remarkable woman’s life.

The truth about Harriet Tubman is as amazing as the movie portrays.

Born sometime between 1820 and 1825 in Dorchester County Maryland, Araminta Harriet Ross (nicknamed Minty) had a clear sense of justice from a young age. Maybe because she carried scars from a whipping she received when she was five or six years old. Or maybe because of the daily violence she was subjected to on the plantation where she lived. Whatever the reason, the most severe injury Harriet received in slavery, happened while she was defending a fellow slave who had left the fields without permission. An overseer was threatening the man and threw a two-pound weight at him. Harriet moved in front of the slave and consequently the weight struck her in the head. For the remainder of her life, Tubman suffered severe headaches, bouts of narcolepsy, and vivid dreams she called visions from God.
 

Harriet Tubman

Stipulations in the will of the man who owned Harriet and her family stated that her family should have been freed after his death, but his son and wife chose not to carry out his wishes. Though Harriet’s father had been freed before their owner’s death.

Fear of being sold further south, Harriet escaped without a plan and then made the trip almost solely on foot from Maryland to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania completely alone. Her main focus…follow the North star. She crossed into the free state of Pennsylvania with liberation and reverence and later recollected: “When I found I had crossed that line, I looked at my hands to see if I was the same person. There was such a glory over everything; the sun came like gold through the trees, and over the fields, and I felt like I was in Heaven.” (Harriet Tubman, Scenes in the Life of Harriet Tubman By Sarah Hopkins Bradford.)

Harriet couldn’t live with the thought of her family still in bondage, so she made her first trip back into slave country about a year after her escape. It’s estimated she made a total of 19 trips and led many others to their freedom in the North. She was never caught and stated, “I was the conductor of the Underground Railroad for eight years, and I can say what most conductors can’t say — I never ran my train off the track and I never lost a passenger.” (Harriet Tubman at a suffrage convention, NY, 1896.)

The beginning of the Civil War gave Harriet another means to rescue more people. She first worked as a cook, then a nurse, then she began to scout and eventually spy for the Union. Harriet Tubman was the first woman—black or white—to lead an armed expedition in the war. The South Carolina, Combahee River Raid, liberated more than 750 people.
 

Harriet, her 2nd husband and family

                       
Harriet Tubman continued to serve others even after the war. She and her second husband, Nelson Davis (who was at least twenty years her younger) lived on a small farm in Auburn, NY where they ran a brick-making business and cared for Harriet’s family and aging former slaves.
 

Harriet Tubman

At the age of approximately 93, Harriet passed away from complications due to pneumonia. She was buried with full military honors at Fort Hill Cemetery in Auburn, New York.
 

Harriet Tubman was a woman from whom we can all learn.

______________________________________________________________

Multi-award-winning author, Michele K. Morris’s love for historical fiction began

when she first read Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House book series. She grew up riding horses and spending her free time in the woods of mid-Michigan. Michele now lives with her six children, three in-loves and ten grandchildren in the great Sunshine State. Michele loves to hear from readers on Facebook, Twitter, and here through the group blog, Heroes, Heroines, and History at HHHistory.com.

Michele is represented by Tamela Hancock Murray of the Steve Laube Agency.

Harriet Tubman and William Henry Seward (and a free book event)

by Kathleen L. Maher

Are you "geeking out" about the new Harriet Tubman movie like me? If so, I thought you might enjoy reading about this amazing lady's not-commonly-known relationship with Lincoln's Secretary of State. 

First, some trivia about William H. Seward, a historical figure and native New Yorker whom I never get tired of studying.

• New York State Senator 1830-34
• New York Governor 1839-42
• US Senator for NY 1849-61 
• Considered early favorite Republican for president in 1860  
• Secretary of State 1861-1869 for Lincoln and Johnson
• Attacked and seriously wounded by Lewis Powell during Lincoln's assassination plot
• purchased Alaskan territory (considered "Seward's Folly") in 1867

Seward was a passionate abolitionist, which damaged his presidential chances in 1860 though he was a strong contender to Lincoln. Slavery was not abolished in New York until 1827, and I found it an ironic surprise to learn his own father was a slaveholder. He and his father had a strained relationship over tight purse strings, and as a young man, William--or Henry as his friends called him--left school to find employment in Georgia, where he witnessed the mistreatment of slaves. He remained devoted to the abolitionist cause even after his family reconciled with him, and called him home to New York to finish his law degree.

Seward earned a reputation for defending a black man accused of murdering four white people following escape from jail. Seward argued a new defense strategy, insanity, citing the abuse the man William Freeman incurred in prison. Seward was an advocate for prison reform and humane treatment for the insane. Seward also defended an underground railroad conductor by the name of John Van Zandt who was sued by a slaveholder. Seward's wife Frances was even more devoted to the abolitionist cause than he. After the Fugitive Slave law of 1850, the couple opened their own home as a safe house along the Underground Railroad route passing through Auburn, New York. 

In the mid 1850's the Sewards met Harriet Tubman in their mutual work on the Underground Railroad. Frances Seward gave Margaret Tubman a place to stay in Auburn after Harriet brought her niece from Maryland. In 1857, a permanent home was offered to Harriet to house her aging parents, whom she had helped escape in a daring trip south. For a while they stayed in Canada, but the active anti-slavery sentiment in Auburn assured her of their safekeeping.  In 1859 the Sewards sold that property to Harriet for a small sum. Harriet would use this house as a base of operations throughout the rest of her activity on the Underground Railroad. 

Harriet met and later married Nelson Davis, and the Auburn wedding was attended by the Sewards, among many other friends. The brick structure of the Harriet Tubman Home on her 25 acre parcel of land is where she spent most of her living from 1859-1913, a part of the Harriet Tubman National Historic Park in Auburn exists to honor her work and legacy. The Thompson Memorial African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church which she helped finance and build remains on the property as well as the home for indigent and elderly African Americans which was her dream to provide after the war.

Tubman died in 1913 at the venerable age of 93. She is buried in Auburn at the Fort Hill Cemetery, which became listed on the National Register of Historic places in 1999.

Kathleen L. Maher’s first crush was Peter Rabbit, and she’s loved conflicted heroes ever since. She has two novellas in BARBOUR BOOKS' collections: Victorian Christmas Brides and Lessons on Love. Winner 2012 ACFW Genesis Award. Author of Sons of the Shenandoah Series: The Abolitionist's Daughter and The Chaplain's Daughter.
Kathleen and her husband live in an old farmhouse in upstate NY.
Follow me at

Amazon: amazon.com/author/kathleenlmaher
Facebook author page: https://www.facebook.com/KLMaherAuthor/
Pinterest: http://www.pinterest.com/kathleenlmaher/boards/
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/2531698-kathleen-l
BookBub: https://www.bookbub.com/profile/kathleen-l-maher

My first book, The Abolitionist's Daughter provides a look into the Underground Railroad through a fictitious family and features real heroes of the Underground Railroad. Book 2 in Sons of the Shenandoah series, The Chaplain's Daughter, kicks off five days of a Free Kindle Event. Be sure to download your free copy today through November 12 on Amazon.

BOOK GIVEAWAY AND SPIES IN HOOP SKIRTS (PART IV)

ANNE GREENE here: This fourth part of my series ends with other lady spies, first Confederate spies and then Union spies. I so hope you’ve enjoyed this series. If so, I’d love to hear from you.

Hundreds of women served as spies for the Confederate army during the Civil War. They often carried information about the enemy's plans, troop size and fortifications on scraps of paper or fabric which they sewed into their blouses and petticoats or rolled into their hair. To smuggle goods such as morphine, ammunition or weapons, they attached them to the frame of their hoop skirts or hid them in baskets and packages, even inside dolls.

Most women spies volunteered for the job, but some were recruited by spymasters. Most fit this description: lady spies were young, white, well-to-do and unmarried, as well as attractive, charming, intelligent, and quick-witted. They by-passed society’s strict rules by meeting men in various locations, and riding horses and in buggies unaccompanied.

Apprehended Confederate women spies were often branded as prostitutes unless their reputations were strong enough to protect them. Punishment for the crime of espionage was imprisonment or deportation to Canada or the South. Male spies were hanged.

Confederate lady spies often gathered information from Union troops who, when occupying southern towns, invited local women to army-sponsored balls, where they would sometimes talk about their military plans, not realizing the potential for espionage.

These women spies eavesdropped on soldiers during dinner parties, at boarding houses where the soldiers stayed, or gathered information from their friends and connections in southern society.

Although it was important for spies to keep a low profile while they worked, once they were detected or released from prison, spies like BELLE BOYD became instant celebrities after the press published their stories.

Belle was born into a Virginia family with strong Southern loyalties. A celebrated beauty, Isabelle Belle Boyd became one of the Confederacy’s most notorious spies after a skirmish with a drunken Union soldier in July 1861. The man invaded her home, tore down a Confederate flag, and spoke offensively to her mother. Enraged, the seventeen-year-old Belle shot and killed him. Acquitted of the crime, but closely watched by Union troops, she beguiled her enemies into revealing military secrets, which she transmitted to Confederate commanders.

In May 1862 Belle stayed in Fort Royal, Virginia, with relatives whose hotel had been taken over by Union officers. She

eavesdropped on their meetings through a hole in a door and rode through enemy lines, to report to Confederate General Stonewall Jackson. Imprisoned that July in Washington, D.C., she was released a month later. A second incarceration the following year ended with her banishment to the South.

Belle sailed for England in May 1864 to serve as a Confederate courier but was intercepted by Union troops. One of them, a naval officer named Samuel Hardinge, fell in love with the alluring spy and helped her escape to London, where they wed. He died shortly thereafter. Belle, now a widow and mother at 20, remained in England to compose her memoirs and launch a successful stage career. She later returned to America, where she continued acting, married twice more and lectured on her wartime experiences across the United States.

MARY KATE PATTERSON was no so famous. When the Civil War began she was sixteen. Mary Kate and her family lived a few miles southeast of Nashville, Tennessee. Vivacious Mary Kate, with flashing brown eyes and dark brown curls, attended old Elliott School in Nashville, Tennessee. Declaration of war between the North and South interrupted her education, but the contacts she made in school were invaluable during her service as a Confederate spy.

The Federal army occupied Nashville early in the war. Mary Kate provided information to Coleman's Scouts, a spy network of the Army of Tennessee. She befriended Yankees officers and frequently obtained passes to Nashville, where she gathered secret messages and supplies for the Scouts and hid them in her buggy's false bottom.

Mary Kate smuggled boots, blankets, and anything needed by the Confederate army through the lines, concealing quinine and morphine in her voluminous riding habits. She admitted after the war, when it was too late for reprisal, that she had carried six hundred dollars’ worth of medicine in just one trip. She and her family sheltered and fed Confederate soldiers, signaling them by a certain arrangement of louvers and lanterns in the windows when it was safe to come in for medical help and hot meals.

Widowed three times, when she died in 1931, she was buried in the Confederate Circle in Nashville's Mt. Olivet Cemetery, the first woman so honored.

BELLE EDMONDSON, born in Mississippi in 1840, served as a Confederate agent throughout the war. In 1862 after the fall of Memphis, she smuggled supplies and funds to the Confederate army. Her love of the South and of danger attracted her to spying, carrying mail and smuggling. In 1863, she worked for the Independent Scouts, headed by Captain Thomas Henderson.

She lived near Memphis, Tennessee and smuggled supplies to Confederate soldiers throughout the war. In 1864, since soldiers did not search women, she hid uniforms, money, buttons, letters, etc. in her luggage and on her clothing and took them through Union lines.

Belle’s trips eventually attracted the attention of Union forces and they issued a warrant for her arrest. In July 1864, she fled south to Mississippi and lived there for the rest of the war. She was engaged three times. The third was announced two weeks before her sudden death in 1873.And finally, I want to speak of two Union spies who did not fit the profile of lady spies.

PAULINE CUSHMAN was a stage actress who later became a spy for the Union army. Born Harriett Wood in New Orleans on June 10, 1833, Pauline was raised in Michigan, but returned to Louisiana at age eighteen to became a stage actress, changing her name to Pauline Cushman.

Two Confederate soldiers, Colonel Spear and Captain Blincoe, offered Pauline money to toast Confederate President Jefferson Davis during a performance.

Offended, she visited Union Colonel Moore to report the men. Moore directed Pauline to carry out the toast, hoping to embed her as a local Union spy.

She toasted Davis and was promptly fired from the production, since they now believed her to be a Confederate sympathizer.

Since she had successfully gained the trust of the local Confederates, Pauline began posing as a Confederate camp follower in Kentucky and Tennessee. She disguised herself as a man while gathering information from soldiers in local saloons.

After visiting the camp of General Braxton Bragg in May of 1863, Pauline obtained the general’s battle plans, but aroused suspicion and was caught. She was tried in a military court and sentenced to death. But her execution was delayed when she became ill.

Shortly after, the Union army invaded Shelbyville, Tennessee, where she was being held, forcing the Confederates to flee without her.

Despite her brush with death, Pauline continued to spy for the Union army. At war’s end, President Abraham Lincoln awarded her the honorary rank of Brevet-Major, earning her the nickname “The Spy of Cumberland.” She was buried with military honors in the Golden Gate National Cemetery.

HARRIET TUBMAN set up a vast spy ring in the south, sending African-American men to pose as servants in order to gather intelligence for the Union army.

One of the most celebrated heroines in American history, Harriet Tubman is best known for ushering slaves to freedom through the Underground Railroad in the 1850s. But not everyone knows that the courageous Harriet, who escaped slavery in 1849, set up the vast espionage ring.

In early 1862, with the support of abolitionist friends in the North, Harriet traveled to South Carolina, where she served as a nurse and teacher for the hundreds of newly liberated slaves who had assembled in Union camps. She recruited black men to slip behind Confederate lines, posing as servants or slaves to gather military intelligence. She organized dangerous missions in which Union troops destroyed plantations and spirited former slaves to freedom on warships. In June 1863, Harriet led an armed expedition along the Combahee River, disrupting Confederate supply lines and liberating more than seven hundred slaves. Later in life, Harriet became a key figure in the suffrage movement.

Which of the Civil War Spies In Hoop Skirts did you like the most? Would you have liked to have lived during that historic period? Do you prefer the freedom of today’s clothing styles or the beauty and romance of the styles of the 1860s? Leave a comment for a chance to win an autographed copy of Angel With Steel Wings.

Thanks for visiting and please leave a comment for a chance to win an autographed copy of Angel With Steel Wings.

ANGEL WITH STEEL WINGS is a World War II romance where Steel Magnolias meet Band of Brothers. While doing her part test flying planes as a Woman Air Service Pilot, WASP, Mandy McCabe escapes her dead-end life in Hangman’s Hollow, Tennessee. But, can she escape from her past? Major Harvey Applegate lost his wife to the WASP program, and he’s convinced Yankee Doodle Gals have no place flying in the war effort. He determines to protect the remaining WASPs by sending them packing back to the home front. Both Mandy and Harvey experience immediate attraction, which increases Harvey’s desire to send Mandy home to safety. Can a man burdened with memories of death undertake added emotional danger? Will their new love survive the test? One love. Two goals. Someone has to give.

ANNE GREENE delights in writing about alpha heroes who aren’t afraid to fall on their knees in prayer, and about gutsy heroines. Her Women of Courage Series, first book, ANGEL WITH STEEL WINGS spotlights heroic women of World War II, and read her private investigating series, Handcuffed In Texas, first book HOLLY GARDEN, PI, RED IS FOR ROOKIE. Enjoy her other award-winning historical romances and novellas. Anne’s highest hope is that her stories transport the reader to an awesome new world and touch hearts to seek a deeper spiritual relationship with the Lord Jesus. Buy Anne’s books on http://www.Amazon.com. Type in Anne Greene. Visit Anne at AnneGreeneAuthor.com.